Takahiro Fujita Jetons les livres, sortons dans la rue
(Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets)

Takahiro Fujita tackles the work of a cult figure in Japanese artistic circles of the 1970’s : Shûji Terayama. Intermingling a wide variety of different atmospheres, this prodigious figure on the young Japanese theatre scene brings back to life, in a radically contemporary way, the unstoppable energy of a bygone era.

When he died in 1983, aged forty-seven, he left behind him more than two hundred books, around twenty films and countless horse-racing chronicles. Shûji Terayama remains a sacred beast of Japanese counter-culture. Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets, one of his most representative early works is the title of a film (1971) which the recounts the story of a young man whose little sister is raped by the players of a football club he is a member of. The author and director Takahiro Fujita, born in the north of Japan in 1985, and whose talents have come to the notice of the likes of writer Oriza Hirata, uses this film as the basis for his piece. Its opening scene, which shocked viewers at the time, is played out in front of the audience. What characterises the piece is the heterogeneous blend of registers that he brings together in a dream-like collage - ranging from the documentary to a colourful, poppy universe. Highly representative of the era in which it is set, Takahiro Fujita endeavours to translate every ounce of the trash-like energy of this “cruel tale of Japanese youth” to the stage. This depiction of an era, full of nonchalance and despair, has strangely contemporary echoes.
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Running time: 2h
Performed in Japanese with French subtitles